40ish & Figuring It Out

Friendship At Forty

• Katie Koelliker • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Ever crave people and peace at the same time? That tension sits at the heart of today’s conversation as we unpack why adult friendships feel heavier in midlife and how to keep them honest, warm, and sustainable. We start with a candid detour through skincare—being intimidated by routines, navigating sensitive skin, and laughing at unopened products—because it mirrors the bigger theme: wanting to care well without getting overwhelmed.

From there, we break down the myth of the “effortless” friendship and explore what actually gets in the way: clashing calendars, caregiving, careers, mental load, and the constant triage that makes planning a single dinner feel like aligning planets. We name the common friendship types we rarely say out loud—the three-days-later texter, the hobby friend, the gentle fade, and the surprise adult friend who becomes a lifeline—and share how labeling these patterns reduces guilt and sets real expectations. We also talk about communication anxiety, tone in texts, and why many of us add LOLs and emojis for reassurance, plus practical ways to lower friction with voice notes, kinder assumptions, and explicit norms.

If you’re craving deeper connection while protecting your energy, you’ll get simple, low-lift practices: standing dates you can actually keep, walk-and-talks, five-word check-ins, meme trading as a love language, and honest scripts for slow seasons. The takeaway is clear: different doesn’t mean worse. Friendship at forty is about alignment and quality, not constant contact. When we show up in ways we can sustain, even small moments feel like a reset.

If any of this made you think “same,” tap follow, leave a quick rating or review, and share this episode with a friend who could use a gentle nudge toward connection. Your support helps more listeners find a community that feels like exhale.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hi friends, welcome back to 40 Itch and Figuring It Out, the podcast where we're all just trying to be functioning adults while also Googling things like why am I so sore when I wake up? And how many cups of coffee is too many? I'm Katie and today we're diving into a topic that has been taking up a lot of mental space for me lately. Adult friendships. Why they're hard, why they matter, and why I want them more than ever. Even though I also want to be left alone half the time. But before we get into the deep feels, we're starting with something I'm becoming weirdly obsessed with. Okay, this week in Katie's Curiosity Corner, it's skincare. Yes, skincare. If you've been with me long enough, you know I don't have one. I barely have a routine for hydration unless swig counts. So I walk into Sephora, which already intimidates me because the lighting is brighter than my future, and this very polished, perfect skin human walks up to me and says, What's your current routine? And I swear I panicked and I said something like uh soap and water, like I'm washing a car. She immediately started pulling out products with words I do not understand. This is peptide, this boosts your barrier, this resurfaces texture, and I'm thinking, ma'am, the only thing resurfacing is my trauma from middle school. Meanwhile, I have friends, and I'm sure you do too, adult friends with jobs and children and lives who have I don't know, 19-step skincare routines? They're doing face masks, they're doing serums, they're doing oils, skin slugging rituals, and I'm over here proud of myself to remember to put on chapstick. But turning 40 has me curious, like, what is everyone doing? Am I behind? Are other people like me? Is this why everyone on Instagram looks like they sleep in a vat up moisturizer? I mean, I use the same moisturizer that I've been using since middle school, and it's something that my mom used. I I don't want to look 25, I just want to look like I've slept more than four hours. So I'm gonna be experimenting slowly, very slowly. And right now, my current routine is wash my face, moisturize, if it applies, I'll put on sunscreen, and then I'll stare at a retinol bottle like it's going to tell me if I'm using it correctly. If you have simple, super simple skincare tips, like beginner level, low maintenance, under$100, send them to me because I am in my help a girl glow era. I tried to get those under-eye. I ordered these a couple years ago because one of my friends shared them. The little pads that go underneath your eyes to help with puffiness, I don't know, maybe dark circles. Mine is mostly um dark circle because of lack of sleep. I I ordered them, I got them, and I'm pretty sure that they are still sitting on my nightstand unopened after I swear it's been five years. I I think I ordered it during COVID when everybody was locked in their houses and ordering everything online. I'm pretty sure that's when I order them. So that's how me changing my skincare routine goes. I'll get something, I won't use it because I'm intimidated by it. I'm also slightly afraid that my skin will get irritated because I have very sensitive skin. My mom had me try Nair instead of shaving when I was I don't know how old. We made the huge mistake of putting it like a lot of it, not like all over my leg, but like a giant swipe. And I think I broke out in a rash in that strip, and so not only could I not shave, but I had a rash on my leg now, so that was cool. Um, I've also gotten in bubble bath when I was younger that irritated my skin. I had let's see, I had chicken pox, um, but I also had poison ivy or poison oak twice in my life, unfortunately. And so from that my skin gets irritated even easier for some reason. I don't, I I can't remember if a doctor explained or a dermatologist explained that because of that my skin would be more sensitive. I don't know if that's real or not, but it's true. I've always had sensitive skin. My husband cannot understand it, and I have passed my skin on to most of my children. So I don't know if you're in the same boat, but again, if you have extremely simple tips, send them my way because I would love to know them. All right, we're gonna move on to the main topic of today's episode: adult friendships. We all go through different friends at different times of life and everything, but I kind of wanted to tackle this topic and talk about adult friendships because it's very relatable. I I'm pretty sure all of you can relate to some of this, if not all of it, at some point in your lives as far as the friendships you've gone through, you're going through, and different things. So, number one, the myth of the effortless effortless friendships, because they're not effortless. I don't know who told us that they would be, but for the most part, they're not when you're in midlife. Adult friendships were sold to us all wrong. When we were kids, it was just you would sit next to somebody at school, and you guys like the same things, whether it was stickers or you had bracelets or hair clips, I don't know, shoes, clothing, whatever it was. And then boom, your best friends. But now it's like, I think you're cool. Wanna grab coffee sometime in the next three to six months, and maybe it will or won't happen ever. I mean, I have friends that I try to do things with, and we're lucky if we see each other once a year, but it's nobody's fault. Life just gets heavier. We're juggling careers, marriages, kids, exes, schedules, mental health, actual health, hormones, and friendships take intentional energy that we don't always have because we're so overwhelmed by all the other stuff. And that's okay. It's just life. Check in with each other. Number two, the life stage mismatch. And this is the realest part. Some of my friends are single and thriving, some are divorced and rebuilding, some are married and in the trenches of toddlers and teenagers, some have no kids and take spontaneous trips to Mexico midweek, and I love them, but I also want to throw a shoe at them. Trying to coordinate one dinner feels like aligning the planets. I have a dinner scheduled for this Saturday. It's a post-birthday dinner that the last time I met with a friend, we put it on our calendars because we were like, we need to meet sooner, and I was like, okay, I think we can make this day work. So I'll follow up next week and let you guys know if this dinner actually happens. But again, it's trying to align planets, accountability calendars. We have group chats, somebody's kids puking, somebody's dog got out, somebody forgot that they double booked, that they, you know, maybe scheduled something way in advance, and then they booked something over it and they didn't put it in the calendar, and now they have you know multiple things going on, and it's just chaos. And yet, when you do get together, you sit down, you laugh, and for that one two hours that you're together, you feel like yourself again. It's like a reset, and I love that. I love that feeling, and I hope you guys do too, because it's great, even if you haven't seen each other. Like I have some best friends that I have been trying to physically see for like three years, probably. Hopefully, it's less. Actually, I think it's less, but I have been trying to see them and it it's like impossible because we are in different stages. And then number three is friendship types that we don't talk about enough. Excuse me. There's the text back and three days later, friend. I love these people. I'm one of these people sometimes. They'll respond like nothing happened, and you know what? Same. Time is fake. I know I have typed in an answer, thought I hit send, and didn't. Sometimes I'll read a text and I, you know, was maybe in the car or busy at work or doing something, multitasking, and I get the text, I read it on my watch, or quickly it's highlighted on my phone, and I see it, I read it, but I can't respond right then, and then my day goes on, and then I forget, and then I forget, and finally, one, two, three days later, I go, Oh my gosh, I never texted that person back, or I thought I texted them back, and then it's still unsent. So it's happened. We also have hobby friends, so these are people that you bond with because your kids are on the same team, whether it's sports, dance, you know, some sort of same activity, so you see each other often, or even people like going to the same gym. I had a group of friends that I met at the gym, you know, we would see each other there regularly because of the classes we were in. Um some of them, you know, we'd go out a little bit. Uh, we did an escape room one time, we went to dinner a few times. My life got a lot busier, so I had to, you know, shift elsewhere. But I know that those group of friends, for the most part, a lot of them still do stuff together, travel and everything. But that's just often where we meet people, and that's why we become friends with them. And then the friendship fade. This is one that happens all too often. Nobody's fighting, nobody breaks up, and nobody gets dramatic. It's just that life shifts and it gets quiet. And it's okay to miss someone you no longer have a place for. I like to say that sometimes people are put in our lives for a reason and not a season. I personally feel like I have been put in people's lives for a very specific reason. I I get in there, I help them with whatever, or I support them in whatever way I am and can, and then it's over. Like I never talk to that person again. But for that short period of time, we're close. Maybe I'm helping them get through something, or I'm just somebody that they can talk to. It um it happens, and I reflect on it, I don't reflect on it badly, and I I've come to realize sometimes that that's just what it is, and maybe I was put in that person's life just for that specific moment, and then we move on with our lives, and that's fine. And then there's the surprise adult friend, and this is a fun one, and I love this one. Someone you didn't expect becomes someone that you can't imagine your life without. The mom that you met just randomly on a Tuesday somewhere, the person who sat next to you at a game, a match, maybe they're not even on your kids' team or event or whatever, but just somebody that you clicked with, maybe a coworker that turned into family or something like that. I made friends with a woman because I was consistently shopping at the exact same time day of the week, and she was always working, and so I would always go to her lane when I was grocery shopping, and she was roughly my age. I don't maybe a little bit younger than me. I don't think she was older, she was either my age, maybe a couple years younger, and we would just banter and have fun and talk, and we we became friends on social media, and I think they ended up moving away, but for that again, that short period of time, we were great friends. Um, and we met in a very unconventional way, and that's okay, like sometimes that happens. So, why do adult friendships require more communication than a marriage sometimes? But seriously, married people can go a couple of days without real conversation and be fine, but a friendship, one misread text, and suddenly you're spiraling thinking she hates me, I'm so annoying. Did I say something weird? And half a friendship now is managing your own anxiety. I mean, I'm pretty sure that I am part of that millennial generation where I have to end every text message with either LOL or some sort of an emoji to make sure that whoever is receiving it knows that I'm not mad, I'm not upset, and that I'm in a good mood. And next, number five, it's okay to want more and to want less. I'm in a season where I crave deeper friendships, but I also crave peace. I also would like to have a little bit more time to be able to have those friendships become deeper. I want people that I can be myself with. I want people I can be myself with, wearing a messy bun, pajamas, and crying because I watched a sad commercial or Hallmark movie. I want friends I don't have to impress. I want friends who also don't need me to be perfect. And that's the beauty of 40-ish. You realize friendship isn't about quantity anymore, it's about alignment, it's about quality. So this week, what I'm still figuring out is how to show up for people I love when my energy is inconsistent. Some weeks I want to connect, I want to go out, I want girl time, and other weeks I'm like, if one more human asks me for anything, even something fun, I'm going to hide in my car. And I do that all the time. I hide in my car. I will I am that that Instagram reel. I am that mom who, after she takes her kids somewhere or brings them home from somewhere, I sit in my car, everybody gets out, and I just sit there for a couple of minutes. My husband or one of my kids will open the door and stare at me, and I'm just sitting there. I might be listening to a podcast, I might be listening to music, I might be in total silence, but I'm trying to recharge myself to get back in the house. I'm learning that caring about people doesn't always mean that you have to be in constant contact. Caring can look like sending a meme, which I have friends that I like, I have a dance friend that I haven't physically seen since I was in my I it's probably been 20 years. I haven't physically seen her, but we send each other reels like it's our jobs. Checking in once a week, dropping off a drink, replying when you can, and being honest when you can't. I'm figuring out how to accept my friendships will look different in this stage of life, and that different doesn't mean worse, it doesn't mean bad, it just means evolving. My hope is that you walk away from this episode feeling a little more seen, a little more normal, and a lot less alone. If this brought up memories, stories, or even friendship heartbreaks, share them with me. I read all of your messages. And if you're working on adult friendships too, tell me what's helping you because you know I'm collecting ideas like Pokemon. Alright friends, that's it for today's episode of 40-ish and figuring it out. If you love this conversation or felt even one moment of, oh my gosh, same, then please take a second to follow the show, leave a quick rating or review, and share this episode with another 40-ish friend who's still figuring it out too. You spreading the word is honestly the biggest gift you can give this show. Thank you for listening, thank you for being here, and I'll see you next time. Until then, keep laughing, keep growing, and keep figuring it out right alongside me. 40-ish and figuring it out is produced and edited by me, Katie Collicker. Sound mixing, also me. We're a very efficient one woman show over here. The music for this episode was created using the Suno app. Special thanks to Suno for providing licensed royalty free music through their platform. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.